Courtesy of Grant Stern

Not photoshopped: Urban activists "weed bomb" a street corner downtown

​​If you've been out drinking downtown lately and stumbled upon a street corner bursting with neon-colored weeds, don't worry: It's not an acid trip gone wrong.

It's weed bombing.

"We're tired of living in a big dump overrun with weeds and trash," says chief bombadier Brad Knoefler, owner of downtown club Grand Central. "If the city is going to keep on treating us like this we're going to draw attention to it."
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Aristotle Ares, 87, wants to resurrect an island lost to the elements 85 years ago

The Port of Miami Tunnel might be a boondoggle, but its construction continues apace. With a giant drill now in place, the big dig begins next month. The debate is now over where to dump the tons of crud. Environmentalists don't want it on Virginia Key, where a port contractor tore up protected mangroves while depositing the fill in March.

Enter Aristotle Ares, a retired, 87-year-old Miami Beach public works engineer.

His idea: Dump the crap into Biscayne Bay and -- boom! -- we've got a brand-new island.
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​Five months after the death of graffiti and tattoo artist Jonathan "Ynot" Corso, his friends and family have received an early Christmas present: the long-awaited arrest of the man behind the wheel of the vehicle that killed him. More >>

broadwayproductioninc.com

Cuthbert Harewood shows off his vision for Liberty City, including Barack Obama Street

​Cuthbert Harewood has a dream -- a dream that one day even the neighborhood of Liberty City, sweltering with the heat of violence and poverty, will be transformed into an oasis of peace and Pizza Huts.

But Harewood's grandiose vision has a simple beginning: renaming two blocks along NW 71st Street as Barack Obama Street.

"Maybe that would stop some of the shooting," he says of the name-change. "My whole goal is to uplift the neighborhood to where people in Liberty City feel good about themselves."

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Almost three months after 21-year-old tattoo and graffiti artist Jonathan "Ynot" Corso was killed in a strip club parking lot, the identity of the driver who mowed him down has finally been revealed -- but the new information leaves more questions than answers.

Corso's life and sudden death was the subject of a September New Times feature, "Marked for Death". His family members and friends -- including members of the graffiti crew MSG, an illegal institution in South Florida for decades -- have been clamoring for the police to press charges in his death.

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Ynotlives.com

A Ynot tribute t-shirt, modeled by somebody Bill Cooke would probably call a "scumbag".

​Bill Cooke hasn't been this unhinged at the New Times since my boss photographed a mannequin wardrobe malfunction.

The self-styled media watchdog behind blog Random Pixels and Loose Thoughts calls my feature on Jonathan "Ynot" Corso -- the prolific graffiti artist killed in late July -- a "glorifying [of] criminal activity". Through some complicated math and a folksy anecdote about Mom telling you not to Crayon your walls, Bill implicates me as an accessory to vandalism:

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This week's feature, "Marked for Death", is the story of Jonathan "Ynot" Corso, the prolific graffiti artist who died after being run over by an Escalade in a brawl in the parking lot of a Davie strip club.

But Ynot's death was just one of dozens of violent incidents at University Drive's Club Eden in recent years.

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Ynot detailing a burner.

This week's feature, "Marked for Death," is the story of Jonathan "Ynot" Corso -- one of the most prolific members of Miami's longest-running graffiti crew, MSG, recently killed in a fight in a strip club parking lot.

We tried to write the story in the language of Ynot and his fellow crew-members. For starters, graffiti artists call themselves "writers" or "bombers". Here's an explanation of some more commonly-used graffiti terms:
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Via Miami Dade Police

Joseph Toomer

​The letter arrived at the judge's chambers in 2003, signed by a public defender-turned-convict named Anthony Genova. He had been busted for drunk driving, was a self-described Xanax addict, and did time for bankruptcy fraud. It was addressed to his old courthouse buddies -- judges and attorneys -- explaining he had found Jesus behind bars. His writing made prison sound like a church camp full of motivational speakers.

"I was baptized with the Holy Spirit and began speaking & praying in tongues," he wrote, according to the Herald. "Praise God!! I stopped cursing, telling jokes and I watch my tongue! I quit smoking!!! I lost 50 pounds!!! . . . I'm embarrassed to say how weak I was when I got to prison, but I left bench pressing 205 lbs."(The period key must have been broken on his typewriter.)

Genova was once the lawyer for Joseph Toomer, who has been in Miami-Dade jail for an astounding twelve years with no trial. A strong-minded 31-year-old with shoulder-length dread-locks, Toomer is the longest-staying inmate in the county. "They have trampled his constitutional rights for 11 years," says close friend Zandra Specter. "This is insane."

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Updated: I received an awful lot of e-mails from interested people, but it looks like it will go to the first to contact me: Nelson from Urban Real Estate in the Warehouse Distrrict. Thanks for playing!

For Art Basel, Brooklyn photographers James and Karla Murray brought to Miami an awesome concept that included recruiting talented graffiti artists to do their thing on to-scale photos of extinct old-school storefronts.

The art hordes have evacuated our city, but one artifact remains from the Murrays' "Graffiti Gone Global" show: a 12-by-8-foot "storefront," pictured above, adorned with original artwork from Japanese artist Shiro, Puerto Rican Sofia Maldonado, and New Yorker Billi Kid. The piece is still inside a showroom at 3252 NE First St. in midtown Miami -- but the showroom's owners have told the Murrays it has to be removed by the end of the week or it will be destroyed. The photographers haven't found anybody who can take the massive artwork.

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Tags:

Art Basel, Graffiti Gone Global, Jim and Karla Murray, MOM and POPism